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I was not ready for a pandemic story, however, I usually go into books blind and Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors, so I stuck with it. I'm glad I did because I was taken on a trip to the Island of Galapagos with Diana, who was supposed to be on a romantic getaway with her boyfriend, Finn, but he had to stay back to work at the hospital.

If you've never read anything by Picoult, you're missing out. She is a master storyteller 🥰 That being said, keep in mind this story is focused around covid and may be triggering for some.

Thank you Netgalley for the complimentary book ❤️ as always, all opinions are mine.

Narrator 5 ⭐

Extremely disappointed with this book, I have never read Jodi Picoult before but have heard great things about her. This book did not live up to my expectations. I don't think it helped to be reading about a pandemic as we are currently living it.

29-year-old Diana has her life pretty much all figured out. She’s rapidly climbing the corporate ladder at Sotheby's, and she’s in a relationship with surgical resident, Finn, with whom she shares a very specific vision of the future in upstate New York. And she’s pretty sure he’s going to propose to her on their upcoming trip to the Galapagos.

Except this book opens on March 13th, 2020. Finn encourages Diana to take their nonrefundable trip alone, and Diana gets stranded on a remote island in the Galapagos with very little cash, almost no access to communication, and even less Spanish. Forced to slow down, alone, in a beautiful and quiet place, Diana’s experience of the early days of the covid pandemic are in sharp contrast to the periodic emails she receives from Finn, who’s on the front lines in a NYC hospital.

And I wish I could say so much more without spoiling this book, but even going into this book knowing that Picoult was going to throw me a curveball, I was caught off-guard.

This is a book about covid, and it’s challenging and dark at times. Readers should go into this one prepared for a realistic depiction of the early days of the pandemic. I’ll put other CW in the comments.

I spent the end of March 2020 reading every piece of news in an attempt to understand what was going on to understand my own risk, quell my anxieties, and try to support the mental health of a caseload of clients without having any more information than they did. I found the experience of reading this book, with the knowledge of where we are currently in this pandemic, to be cathartic and validating more often than it was triggering.

Picoult captured the details of those early days in a way that I think will feel relatable to many, and has created an important historical text of this time period. At the same time, this was a captivating and engaging read without any easy answers.

And now, after reading my second book of 2021 set in the Galapagos, I really want to go!

Thanks to Ballantine for sending me a netgalley widget and putting this one on my radar.

This was the first book by Jodi Picoult I have read. I went into it with neutral expectations. While I enjoyed Diana's character at times, I don't think Picoult developed who she was enough as a person prior to the pandemic. I was so startled by the plot twist that it took away from Picoult's romantic writing. Writing a book that throws the reader right back into the beginning days of the COVID-19 pandemic is a risky move. I understand that Picoult wanted to write about this experience that many of us share, therefore it makes sense all of her Trump and modern day references, but they took away from the story.

I had been hearing friends rant and rave about this novel, so I was thrilled to be given an advanced copy. This book is thought-provoking and uncomfortable, seemingly hitting too close to home as it explores ideas of natural selection mirrored by the animal life at the Galapagos Islands as the world deals with a global pandemic similar to what we have been experiencing over the past couple years with COVID19. This book is another fantastic novel by Picoult, but it was gut-wrenching, as many of her books are. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books for a copy of this book for an honest review.

This may be too close to home for some as we are still dealing with covid 19. It deals with what it is to be human, and the love, resilence, bravery and hope in the face of a global pandemic. Well written.

Wish You Were Here is a story about covid and when everything first started. I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this but I'm really glad I did! There is a twist you will never see coming! I highly recommend this book!

Jodie Picoult, as always, created a novel that is emotional, moving, and ethically ambiguous. I thought she really illustrated what the beginning of the pandemic in the US felt like well, and I enjoyed the twist at the end. Would recommend.

Diana O’Toole is an art specialist in New York working at Sotheby’s, and living with her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident. Life is on track and could not be more perfect, as they have planned a trip to the Galápagos right before her 30th birthday, until the pandemic hits New York hard. Diana and Finn make a decision to not let the cost of the trip go to complete waste, so Diana takes the trip on her own.

I am still in awe of what I have read, as a nurse who worked in the front lines. The medical language, descriptions of the treatments, and the daily goings-on in the hospital was captured so well in the story, I felt that I have relived the experience once again.

More than that, the huge twist in the end really shocked me to my core. The writing was intense, emotional, and quite extraordinary. The Galápagos experience that Diana went through was incredible and has definitely made that part of my bucket list.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It was truly incredible!

Audio Review: Marin Ireland is one of my top fave narrator and wow this was amazing. I got lost in the Galapagos with all the wonderful characters, it was hard to believe this was all done by the one and only Marin Ireland.

I absolutely love Jodi Picoult. Her work is always so progressive and well-researched. This book was timely and bold and necessary.

This is my first book by this author, though I’ve heard of her many times. Overall I felt it was a decent story, well written and worth reading. A word of warning to readers who may be sensitive to the topic, but this is about the Covid pandemic and contains much detail about Diane, the main characters hospitalization as well as other patients. You may or may not want to read even more on this topic than is thrown at you via all sorts of media daily. So the reader should be prepared for that.
A good part of the book talks about Diane’s trip to the Galápagos Islands. Without giving any spoilers, this is the part I ended liking the least. Diane has a boyfriend, Finn, who is a resident surgeon at a NYC hospital. He is dealing with Covid first hand and is also the one who helps her through her illness.
For readers of The Midnight Library, once again there are issues about the existence of “something” in between life and death. While the story is fiction, so much is reality from what we have all dealt with at some level the past two years and in that way it felt much different.

This book was tougher than most. Because the pandemic is still happening, this boom was raw even for Picoultbooks. Once again the author makes the reader feel empathy for all the various characters despite their flaws. her descriptions of living with Covid, as well as taking care of Covid patients would convince the strongest anti-vaxxers I believe. Kudos!

In typical, Jodi Piccolo fashion, she brings us a book that really pushes the envelope of your thought process and where the mind can. take you, a journey. Not only does she weave us an intense story about covid but she also gives us a travel journal of the Galapagos. I loved this book! It makes you wonder about all the possibilities!

I have no idea how to rate this book, nor how to review it. I did not see this happening. I can't tell you what happens, because that gives the whole story away. Picoult has well-developed characters and her descriptive talents make one feel they are there with Diana and Finn and Gabriel and all the others.

Diana's life is planned to the nth degree. What is it they say? We make plans and God laughs.

Outstanding and up-to-date read. Very Jodi Picoult. Loved it! Read it twice already. She sets the bar very high. She almost never fails to deliver. And this time she knocks it out of the park.

This story starts out intriguing because it is so real to so many people. Covid-19 struck our country like a Tsunami. Those who were old enough to remember that day, 3/13/19 know exactly where they were when the announcement that the shut down of our country was the only news on any TV station. For me, I left my 5th grade classroom that day not knowing that I wouldn’t return to that room for the rest of the year. 2019 and 2020 continued to get worse and worse. Jodi Picoult’s book Wish You We’re Here told a delicate tale of how Covid-19 affected everyday people on a daily basis.

The characters in the story were easy to relate to and represented the struggles of so many. I read furiously through the first 1/3. After Diana arrived in the Galapagos Islands and the story seemed to have shifted to a story about “finding her meaning in life” and a “love story” as she learned to adapt to island ways, I began to feel disappointed. Something about this story and most definitely because I love Picoult, made me forge on.

Part 2 shook me from my trance because I did NOT see that coming! Wow! Just WOW! I am so happy I continued reading. The second half of the book was just incredible. As Picoult has proven time and time again, life isn’t always the way it seems and events don’t always end happily or tied with a near bow. Picoult’s books are real, raw, important, and they are the stories that people need to hear.

If you started this book and felt a bit of a lull in the first half, don’t give up. You won’t be disappointed.

I was nervous to read a COVID book given that we're still in the pandemic AND this experience has been so traumatic for me, so please keep that in mind when reading this review. It was hard to suspend my own feelings about people's behavior during this time, which made me really frustrated with the characters in this book. So much of what they did or didn't do felt completely wrong knowing what we know now, and I just had a difficult time separating now from then. Maybe if I'd waited to read this in a year or two I would have felt differently, or maybe not. Tread lightly.

This book was a whirlwind and I have to say I was rooting for the romance that didn’t happen. I fell in love with the characters in the book and wanted to badly for there to be the happy ending I was hoping for. Having this book take place during Covid was interesting and probably too soon for my liking but curious to see if other books will start following this lead.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you net galley for the ARC. This book unfortunately fell flat for me despite an interesting premise. The first 50-100 pages were interesting but then it felt like a text book to me and the plot was very dull. I thought it would be more relatable since Picoult discussed the COVID epidemic but it was a lot of medical jargon that went over my head. The main character’s story when she traveled was almost the same every day with very little plot to it. It was very hard to finish. I was disappointed with this book as with her last book, the research she does is very in depth but her books are starting to feel like reading history text books.

I usually enjoy Jodi Picoult, but this was just an okay read for me. The beginning was slow, but the second half had some interesting turns and twists. I’ll definitely recommend this to anyone I know who is a patient reader. Thank y NetGalley for this advanced copy!